An amazing, and hilarious lawsuit is being filed by New Yorkers against the cable giant, because it temporarily deprived them of the chance to witness Linsanity on their TV screens. From the Hollywood Reporter: “Headed into the team’s Feb. 4 match-up with the New Jersey Nets, the Knicks had a 8-15 record when an unheralded point guard from Harvard named Jeremy Lin stepped off the bench and scored 25 points. The team reeled off seven straight wins to get to 15-15, but many Knicks fans couldn’t see it because Time Warner and MSG were locked in a standoff over carriage fees. The dispute was settled on Feb. 17, bringing MSG back to television in much of the NY region. But some fans haven’t forgiven Time Warner Cable for robbing them of the opportunity to see 49 days of Linsanity. In an amended class action, a group of plaintiffs demand that the cable distributor reimburse them for more than $5 million in service fees and charges for withholding programming. The named plaintiff in this lawsuit is Harold Hoffman, who says he was induced on the phone by a TWC representative to sign up in 2008 for service with the promise he would receive programming on the MSG and MSG+ networks. Hoffman says he had little choice if he wanted to see televised games featuring the Knicks, Rangers, Islanders and Devils. No other cable service was available for his Englewood, New Jersey residence, and because he didn’t own his property, he wasn’t empowered to consent to the placement of a DirecTV satellite antenna on the property. So he signed up for TWC, and when the games were taken off the air for 49 days beginning at the beginning of this year, he couldn’t deduct from his billing statement the component of charges allowable to MSG and MSG+. He’s filed a lawsuit on behalf of all similarly situated individuals for redress.The games are now back on, but his lawsuit continues.”

Finally! For all the New York residents on here, you know what we’re talking about. For over a month, the dispute between Madison Square Garden and Time Warner Cable left Knicks fans unable to watch their team and the Linsanity that’s recently ensued. But today, MSG reached a deal to put Knicks games back on television for some 2 million TWC subscribers in the New York area. From ESPN: “One state official close to the negotiations said [Jeremy] Lin’s phenomenal run forced the deal, along with the recent play of the Rangers, whose hockey games are also carried on the MSG network. NBA commissioner David Stern stepped in over the last two days, telling the sides how important it was to get Lin back on TV for both parties, for the league and for basketball itself, said one person close to the talks who requested anonymity. New York governor Andrew Cuomo called each company’s top executives in the last two days, according to another state official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were private. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said he had been working for a month to shepherd the companies toward agreement. The deal came just as the Knicks prepared to host the New Orleans Hornets Friday night. A hurricane of ‘Linsanity’ has swirled around the breakthrough 23-year-old, who was born in Palo Alto, Calif., to Taiwanese parents. His play has helped lift the stock of The Madison Square Garden Co., which owns the Knicks and the MSG network that carries their games. On Friday, shares closed up 98 cents, or 3.1 percent, at $32.85.”

The jaw-dropping number initially reported for the LA Lakers’ new TV deal with Time Warner Cable was $3 billion (a figure disputed by the cable giant), but according to the OC Register, team owner Dr. Jerry Buss and co. could be in line for up to $5 billion from the deal: “That $5 billion is over 25 years – or it’ll be merely $4 billion over 20 years if the future option isn’t exercised. It has been widely and wrongly reported as less. Let’s pause and appreciate how much money one club, starting next season, will get per year all to itself just from local TV: $200 million … when Forbes values the entire Milwaukee Bucks franchise at $258 million. It leads to a very good question: whether the NBA’s new supposedly prohibitive luxury-tax penalties to start in 2013 are really going to stop the Lakers from continuing to throw money at their problems – because they’ve solved a lot of them very well that way without having this new billionaire boys’ club. Well, there is a little thing called revenue sharing that has largely been forgotten while the players and owners have been arm-wrestling. The terms haven’t been hammered out by the owners yet, but it is understood the large-market handouts are increasing … exponentially. And those new penalties are plenty severe – particularly the extra dollar charged if a club is a taxpayer four out of five years. The Lakers’ 2010-11 $20 million tax bill would swell to $45 million under the new rules. Add the extra dollar as a regular taxpayer, and to field the sort of team the Lakers just did, you’re looking at writing a $65 million check – for a lot of nothing in return when you get swept in the second round. If you can win a championship and maintain the cachet that the Lakers’ brand holds, though, maybe it can be worth it. That’s a call the Lakers will have to make – or more accurately, hope they get to make – in the future.”